Many of the issues of the Southern Pines Pilot from the mid-1930s include a cartoon by Murray Jones, Jr. called “Caro-Graphics,” featuring odd and interesting facts and legends from North Carolina history. Here’s an example, from the October 15, 1937 paper:
I thought I’d see if any Miscellany readers knew any more about these. I haven’t looked at any other papers from that period, but this seems like the kind of series that would have been syndicated. And is there any chance that these have been collected? While some of the claims seem a bet far-fetched, the facts and trivia they present would be fun even for a modern audience.
Fun indeed, Nicholas. I’d enjoy seeing more examples… Caro-Graphics seems to be a regional knockoff of the syndicated “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” cartoon that appeared for decades in U.S. newspapers…. I also remember such features on the sports pages….
I don’t know Murray Jones Jr., but in “Durham County,” Jean Bradley Anderson lists him among “a group of men who became professional artists” in the 1930s. And an ad in Arts magazine (1940) mentions him as an instructor at the Summer School of Painting, Saugatuck, Mich.
There were even more sports-page cartoonists of this type than I had recalled
http://www.freewebs.com/vintagebaseballautographs/thecartoonists.htm
including this one who appeared in the News & Observer
http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/agcomm/magazine/fall02/ballard.htm
Interesting! These do recall the early Ripley’s cartoons. I’ll post more of these every now and then.
Big hat tip to comic strip historian Allan Holtz for making Caro-Graphics his “Obscurity of the Day”:
http://strippersguide.blogspot.com/